[lbo-talk] RE: Postmodern prince

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Dec 5 11:45:11 PST 2003


Kelley:
>
> Seems more like a hole that needs to be patched up in your theory. I
mean,
> I have a few ideas how to fabricate the patch and I'm toying with the
> needle and thread right now, but I'm wondering how you do.
>

I am not sure what you mean. That sponsored research tend to produce clear writing seems to be empirically sound and there are several reasons for that, such as (1) you need to write a clear grant proposal to get the funding; (2) you need to write a report to the funding agency that usually will not put up with obscure bs; and (3) researchers do not feel pressure to sell the results, because the have already received their payment, all they need is to disseminate the findings they already reported to the funding agency with the minimum effort, without "jazzing it up" for particular audiences.

As far as the obscuring effect of the market is concerned, I understand that my proposition seemingly goes against the contention that our fearless moderator made about the effect of the market on the media (it dumbs down the contents), but I do not think these two are contradictory. Tee-vee is chasing mass audiences which implies quest for the lowest common denominator and producers mimicking each other in that quest. Academic writing, otoh, targets narrowly defined market niches defined by the tastes and identities of the literati class, so it gets more elusive and obscure to the common tastes. It is a form of dumbing down, but of a different sort than that by tee-vee. The latter is dumb because it is trivial and hackneyed, the former is dumb because it is unnecessarily esoteric and complicated.

Of course, that does not mean that the mode of remunerating the writer is the only factor that affects the writing - the usual suspects, such as burnout or lack of talent, still apply.

Wojtek



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